Week Ending - 2021/05/09

HARD COX GOING DEEP WITH EYE-WATERING LENGTH

This weekend saw the eagerly anticipated Thames Path 100-mile race taking place in the south of England. Not for the faint-hearted, the route, as the title suggested, ran alongside the river Thames starting in Richmond, west London and ending up in Oxford via Windsor, Maidenhead, Reading and Abingdon. With such an arduous distance to be tackled, this was not a race for the bumbling amateur nor people wanting to dip their toe in the water, so to speak, of hardcore endurance running. Yet nearly 200 runners from across the country signed up to for the gruelling event including Badgers star Mark Cox. Teammates have seen the hard-hitting floor fitter put some serious graft in to his training in 2021 and with his support team assembled, the 36-year-old set off early on Saturday morning in truly filthy wet weather, hardly the ideal start. He went through marathon distance (26.2 miles) just over a quarter of the way in 3:35 and continued before hamstring trouble at forty miles almost kyboshed his hopes of a finish altogether.

He went through halfway in around six hours despite wanting to withdraw as the pain began to take its toll. With fellow Badger Dave Jenkinson running a marathon distance in sub 5 time between Henley on Thames and Wallingford in support it was left to Jimmy Dewis to

help encourage the determined dad of two home over the remaining 22 miles. Raconteur Dewis produced some of his very best banter to get Cox going again which he did as the clock went past midnight.

With former men’s skipper Adi Payne in the fold with his spreadsheet expertise and Millie Jenkinson and Stefan Martin also in Cox’s corner, the ultra-tired athlete finally crossed the line in the dark in the early hours of Sunday morning some 17 hours and 37 minutes after starting out. Incredibly, Cox finished 15th overall in the race from 188 in total, a truly magnificent achievement, less than four hours behind the winner and a mammoth ten ahead of the final finisher.


He was quick to pay tribute to his very good lady Marta and their two children who have all supported his effort from the very start. His teammates were thrilled with his heroics both on the course and back at home watching his exploits online care of the tracking app showing his progress. Payne in particular was once again in awe of the tremendous length achieved by pumped-up Cox.

The race was comfortably the longest he had ever run in one go, overtaking the 69-miler completed in 2017. While he has been running for a few years now, Cox was not always the athlete. The former clubber enjoyed a good night out but is a testament to the fact that hard

work gets you results. He has dropped a staggering 45 kilos from peak to trough in his quest

to achieve feats like this at the weekend. A well-earned rest week is now scheduled before the July Lakeland 50 race takes priority in his next mini-training block.

Elsewhere and somewhat closer to home, the Hartshill Hayes based Bluebell challenge event took place with Serena Baker knocking out 9 laps for a total of 18 miles with team-mates Karen Thompson and Liz Peel going even further to complete their 86th and 91st marathons respectively in a touch over 6 hours.